COLOURS

After a second change of line-up (drummer Rosenthal and keyboardist Schmidtchen called it a day) "Colours" had been the follow-up to SC & ME and revealed a slight change in Eloy's style being not over-laden any more by broad keyboard walls and less pompous than their previous records. The more compact and rocking songs are mostly dominated by electric guitar and though they're not really outstanding and quite uniform in style the positive thing to tell about Eloy is that unlike other 70's bands with bigger names they did not drift into a commercial sound. The opener "Horizons" presents lots of clavinet sound and some atmospheric female vocals by two guest singers. Especially "Illuminations" and "Child Migration" are in a quite rocking up-beat vein and the more mellow "Impressions" features a nice flute solo probably accomplished by keyboards sounding rather unusual for them. The final "Sunset" is an instrumental track with soaring synths sound and some acoustic guitar. Overall this one had not been a very versatile nor excellent album, but a rather pleasant one, good enough for an occasional spin. The two bonus tracks on the CD-reissue are okay but not really worth mentioning. For the year of 1980 a nice one in 70's style but nowadays rather dated and certainly not an essential Prog record!